Economists have noted a huge spike in SA’s imports of solar cells and panels since the beginning of the year. Eskom’s statisticians recently estimated that there was up to 4,411MW of rooftop solar in June, a figure that has more than quadrupled since early last year.
These are installations by households and businesses that are below the radar of Eskom or the regulators because they don’t have to be formally registered. But if all this new small scale solar capacity is indeed out there, it’s already equivalent to 70% of the total renewable energy generation capacity that’s formally come onto the grid in the more than a decade since the government opened the first bid window for its renewable energy independent power producer programme. ...
There’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in SA. Our subscription packages now offer an